Monday, February 19, 2007

Another good run on the Crowchild loop, with the added bonus of a short chat with Pedals, whom I met at 10th Street. It's been a fabulous weekend for getting out for anything, let alone running.

In other news: if nothing else, I'm not afraid of commitment. I put my name in for the New York City Marathon, running November 4 (which happens to be my Dad's birthday, by the way.) Entry is by lottery and they're only taking 38,000 runners (only!) I should know by mid-May if I'm in.

And I've signed up for the Calgary Marathon, kind of as a training run for the above. So I have to start getting out there and actually running. And being serious about it. Should be fun.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

I've been so busy the last couple of weeks. Between work and school and career and cold weather, I haven't been able to get out at all. Any free time seemed to be taken up by sleeping. So it's nice to have a three day weekend to just kick back and catch up.

I didn't do the usual Sunday distance run, cuz even on my weekend off, I still have stuff to do. So it was a long short run. Actually it was the usual Crowchild loop. With the warm weather, a lot of the snow is gone from the paths, but since I was out a little late in the afternoon, and since the clouds had moved in, much of the water on the paths was beginning to freeze. Very few places were there was water, but what there was, was treacherous.

It's also really breezy out, a typical chinook. A couple of the wind chimes over by the Pumphouse were actually making some noise.

It wasn't my fastest run, but it wasn't bad considering how long it's been since I've been out. And I feel quite good after.

Distance: 10.00 km. Time: 56:49 Average speed: 10.6 kph.

Shoes: Saucony Grid Phoenix (Yellow) A.

Weather: Mostly cloudy and 3C, with winds around 30 kph from the west, gusting to 45.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

It's a little cool, but a very pretty day out. Everything is blanketed with fresh, fluffy snow, and it's still coming down. Not much of a breeze, either, though what there is, is chilly.

I had planned to run Crowchild today, but by 10th Street, I was feeling it. Nothing serious, but the legs just weren't there today. Strange, cuz I always worry about running out of lungs.

Anyway, I cut it short at 14th Street, and crossed there. On the way back, it wasn't exactly a struggle, but I felt slow. And The Path Under The Stairs was particularly challenging, relatively speaking.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

After almost three years of running, I've had maybe half a dozen incidents of shoelaces coming untied. Today, I had three. What's up with that??

And a guy on a bike found the icy patch coming down under the 10th Street bridge, and just about lost it. Significant for me was that he was headed straight for me at the time. I danced out of the way as best I could when I say his back wheel slipping out from under him, but he managed to recover before going all the way down, and we continued on our separate ways.

And then there was the urgency of needing to get to the washroom at Edworthy. That probably cut about twenty seconds per km from my time for the first half of the run. Except, just as I was coming up to the Edworthy parking lot, a train crept across the path. And I mean crept. It was also proabably the longest freight train ever to pass through the city. My physiology was well challenged.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

It seems like ages since I've been able to get out for a lunch time run. But today, I went out as soon as I was home from some business downtown. I felt that I needed to get out as early as possible today, or I wouldn't get out at all.

With all the new snow, and the drop in temperatures, it wasn't all that bad. The Path Under The Stairs hadn't gotten any attention from the snow clearing crews, but the paths along the river were mostly cleared. Another nice thing was the wind wasn't quite as nasty as it had been yesterday. There certainly wasn't any blowing snow, and occasional white-out conditions that we were experiencing yesterday, either.

Today was a shorter run, to 14th Street. I wasn't as energetic as I have been in the last year, either, but I didn't have any trouble finishing the run. It was just a feeling of being slower than usual. The interesting thing about that feeling, is that I don't really know if I really am slower; but it feels like it.

Distance: 7.05 km. Time: 39:59 Average speed: 10.6 kph.

Shoes: Saucony Grid Phoenix (Yellow) A

Weather: Mainly sunny and -16C, although wx.ca suggests -12C. The winds are about 20 kph from the north, which puts the windchill around -24C - quite tolerable.